Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @02:04PM
from the fresh-from-the-daystrom-institute dept.

MrSeb writes "Twin Creeks, a solar power startup that emerged from hiding today, has developed a way of creating photovoltaic cells that are half the price of today's cheapest cells, and thus within reach of challenging the fossil fuel hegemony. As it stands, almost every solar panel is made by slicing a 200-micrometer-thick (0.2mm) wafer from a block of crystalline silicon. You then add some electrodes, cover it in protective glass, and leave it in a sunny area to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect. There are two problems with this approach: Much in the same way that sawdust is produced when you slice wood, almost half of the silicon block is wasted when it's cut into 200-micrometer slices; and second, the panels would still function just as well if they were thinner than 200 micrometers, but silicon is brittle and prone to cracking if it's too thin. Using a hydrogen ion particle accelerator, Twin Creeks has managed to create very thin (20-micrometer), flexible photovoltaic cells that can be produced for just 40 cents per watt; around half the cost of conventional solar cells, and a price point that encroaches on standard, mostly-hydrocarbon-derived grid power."

Even with the losses, I always though hydrogen would be the way to go for excess energy stored up through the day. Of course, on a large scale, I wouldn't be using photovoltaics but perhaps some type of concentrator and steam electrolysis. Molten salt may also be a way to go at that level.

On a small level, how problematic would hydrogen be to store if used for things like heating a house? I realize it wouldn't power cars at its density level (natural gas already takes up too much space).

Stored heat in an insulated molten salt reservoir is far more efficient than chemical batteries for overnight base load production. But you are right about hydrogen, A heat engine is a heat engine. It would not take that much extra equipment to pipe heat from burning hydrogen though the same boiler system for longer term stored energy.

Natural Gas and Nuclear are not renewable. And nuclear power is "scary", despite being cleaner and safer than coal, oil and natural gas. And neither has anything to do with molten salt heat storage. If you are attempting to store electricity from ANY source of power, there is no good solution. However if you are attempting to store energy from the sun, as indicated by the original comment about "overnight storage", then you are far far better off storing solar heat directly than you are in converting it to

Ultracaps... that's where we need to go for short term storage. If they can stem the leakage they're prone to, then long term as well. Other than storage density, they're really a spectacular well of desirable characteristics already.

But these new solar cells... the question is, when can we buy them, as it always seems to be with these breakthroughs. And for my area, how well will they withstand hail?

Flywheels, the most efficient means of energy storage we have. Large ones, in sealed units, buried underground like a septic tank, that remain there 50 years or so, and can power your house for week or two in case of outages.

Normally a flywheel is spun by a motor, which can also be used as a generator. So you (super basically!) just wire the flywheel motor into your circuit and when you have excess power it accelerates and when you have excess draw it decelerates.

As far as I know the energy input and retrieval is still entirely mechanical, but the major advancements in flywheels have been magnetic bearings, and very high vacuums, which dramatically reduce friction losses.

I'm asking because I disassembled my magnetic resistance excercise bike recently and seen that they use a flywheel along with magnets that come move closer or farther to vary the resistance, and just wondered if that is how they generate the electricity from an industrial level flywheel these days or if a generator is mechanically attached.

I was thinking flywheels too. They can't easily be adapted to automotive use, but if you can dedicate a whole room to a flywheel system size and weight are no longer a concern. However, they'd have to be more underground than the average basement, so if a flywheel breaks apart the resulting destruction doesn't bring the whole building down. Tons of potential kinetic energy stored in such a small area makes for a spectacular show if released all at once.

The energy stored in a flywheel is I * omega ^ 2. With the materials we have available now and the size you want to allocate to such a thing, manufacturers have found it works best to have a flywheel with a modest moment of inertia and crank the rotational rate way up high (100,000 rpm for starters). To keep the flywheel from spontaneously shattering, high speed flywheels are mostly made from carbon fiber. And with the flywheel spinning so fast, the only way to keep them from losing energy to friction is to have them spin in a vacuum on magnetic bearings. Then you add in a high efficiency motor/generator, with some serious power electronics to commute the phases at ~kW power levels. These are all proven technologies (see Beacon Power [beaconpower.com]), but compared to a bank of lead acid batteries, it isn't an affordable solution for a home.

I was talking to a manufacturer recently, and they indicated about a 20-25% premium relative to SLAB's in terms of first cost. For deep-discharge applications, you would break even in 3 years when you need to replace the batteries.

Obviously this won't power a car on its own anytime soon, but I thought you might find it interesting anyway: http://www.williamshybridpower.com/ [williamshybridpower.com] Williams Hybrid Power is a spin-off of the Williams F1 race team that competes in Formula One. They developed this flywheel storage for use in their F1 race car, but IIRC under the particular restrictions of Formula 1 battery systems proved more competitive. It's been used to provide power for a "boost button" in Porsche high-performance cars though, and they are t

Costs are still a bit high for flywheels. Here is a quote from this [wikipedia.org] article; "Costs of a fully installed flywheel UPS are about $330 per 15 seconds at one kilowatt." So to supply 1kW for a week it would cost 330*4*60*24*7= $13.3m.Flywheels are great for instant power to level output but not yet viable for long term storage. A flywheel to give power overnight would even be $800k.

The best batteries currently are all variants on lithium-ion. Where does the lithium come from [wikipedia.org]? Much of it is in Bolivia, China, and Afghanistan. I'm not sure if changing control of a critical infrastructure mineral from the current oil producing cast of clowns to cocaine cartels, masters of corruption and religious fanatic heroin-pusher fucktards is a win. Who is worse; the House of Saud or the Taliban? Also, how much lithium is there? How much lithium would we need to replace automotive motors with battery systems? I'll leave as an exercise to the reader whether we'd run out of oil or minable lithium first if we converted fossil fuel surface-based* vehicles and homes/businesses to electric. Add up the energy capacity of the fuel tanks when filled with gas/diesel. You might not like the answer.

*Battery-powered air vehicles are a no-go. No battery technology comes close to the energy density per gram of hydrocarbon. You can move an airplane, its cargo and its fuel halfway around the globe with JP-A. Can't do that with batteries. Just not enough joules per gram of battery, plus batteries don't become (appreciably) lighter as you discharge them; spent chemical fuel doesn't have to be carried once it's burned.

Yeesh! That one reads more like a cautionary tale in not having a backup plan, and not having a backup plan for your backup plan.

A question to ask yourself when dealing with something like this: "Could a software problem ever cause a catastrophic overflow?" If the answer is "yes," then you'd better make sure you've got a double contingency for dealing with it--an overflow spillway leading to the original reservoir (which this one lacked), and mechanical failsafes so the pumps will stop working if the water

No they wouldn't. In direct sunlight, the amount of power hitting the Earth is about 1kW/m^2. The top of my laptop is 0.09m^2, so the total solar energy hitting the back (assuming I'm sitting in direct sunlight with the back of the screen perpendicular to the Sun - and have you ever tried that?) is 90W. The most efficient solar cells ever made are 45% efficient. Most are about 10-20%. At 20% efficient, that's 18W. Still not bad, but once you're out of direct sunlight and into somewhere where you can actually see the screen, that drops to under 5W. Not worth bothering with. You can, however, get parasols with solar panels on top. These will quite happily power a laptop...

Because the story comes out when the technology is still in fairly early stages of development, and then it takes 5-10 years from that point for people to work out the engineering difficulties to actually bring it to full-scale production (or it turns out not to be practical).

Uh, that's not the argument against drilling. The argument against drilling is that the benefit will be short term, i.e. that it will only last 1-2 years. The benefit of R&D lasts much longer - even when this technology is obsolete, the next one is likely to be based on what was learned developing it.

Actually, photovoltaic cells have a fundamental efficiency limit, and we are already close (well within an order of magnitude) of that already.

Also, it's more than that. Mostly, solar energy is not concentrated. People are just spoiled by semiconductor integrated circuits. Photovoltaics have been steadily improving, but the fact is solar power is not very dense...actual sunlight is not a concentrated source of energy. There's only so many watts per square meter that fall, and the sun doesn't always shine. The only way to get real gains is to set out more solar panels. So there is going to be no "breakthrough" like there sometimes is with other technologies that are enabled by integrated circuits; even if somebody invents the absolute perfect solar cell that sucks up every uJ of energy that hits it.

People set their expectations based on technologies that are enabled by integrated circuits, but fail to realize that more fundamental technologies can't be doubled in speed or cut to 1/4 the cost just be printing more of them on the same amount of silicon.

We are very close to the fundamental efficiency limit of *power per square meter*. Which is a valid, but secondary concern. If solar cells are cheap enough, there is plenty of space for them in deserts, suburban roofs, and perhaps even parking lots! A manhattan skyscraper won't be able to power itself, but a 30km*30km plot of land in Nevada receives enough sunlight over 24 hours to power the entire U.S. with electricity.
The important metrics for any energy source are:
* cost per watt over the entire lifetime of the system
* pollution caused and non-renewable materials used per watt over the entire lifetime of the system.
This research improves the cost per watt metric. As soon as it is better than coal, we will see huge solar cell power stations.

Sure, solar power doesn't produce infinite power per area. But that doesn't matter. In fact, I'd argue it still produces quite a lot.

It's been known for a long time that the price of manufacturing per watt is the important thing for solar, and that goes down all the time. There is no known lower limit to prices here.

I think you're underestimating how much space there is when you say solar isn't very dense. A good sunny day will give 1000W solar input for one square metre. There are a million square metres in a square kilometre, meaning a gigawatt of solar input. That's a typical nuclear reactor's worth. But not all of that can be used. Let's assume 10% efficiency, meaning 10 square kilometres/nuclear reactor. Add half for support equipment and it's 15 square kilometres.

That's a square less than four kilometres wide. For a nuclear reactor this would be an acceptable safety zone - it's pretty small really.

There is plenty of space for solar if it only becomes cheap enough. It is already cheap enough in places like Hawaii, and it will only get cheaper while fossil fuel prices will keep going up.

Well, it also doesn't hurt that when the technology comes out you get the marketing number only.

Sure, the panels are 40c/W, but put them in a box, pay the employees and overhear and then they're $1/W. Install them with a conversion system and batteries and all of a sudden they're $3-$7 per Watt much like they've always really been. (And of course, that's peak, and the average cost it probably more like $10-$25 / Watt.)

Developments like these are positive, to be sure, but the cells themselves are only part of a pretty pricy equation. Even if this tech pans out, it probably won't end up reducing the price much more than 20%. Nice, but no where near the "half" that they like to tell you.

Yes, we here many of these stories, and then years later nothing has changed... Other than the fact that the cost/watt of pv has continued to drop a significant percentage year after year after year. If that doesn't suit one's definition of progress, redefine "nothing has changed"...

(..), I would set up solar pv all over my property if it was just a bit more cost effective...

If I'm not mistaken, pv already is cost-effective if not cheaper than conventional energy sources in a variety of places, be it with a significant upfront investment (but with cost-effective = including that investment). Any progress in the cost/watt department will simply increase the # of places where it pays to put up solar panels.

Eh? Solar power has made huge strides in terms of decreasing costs even in the face of inflationary pressure. Solar used to be $5 a watt. Now it is common to find panels for $1 a watt (sunelec.com). This technology looks to cut that in HALF.

solar panels still never even come close to putting out energy that comes close to the energy used in manufacturing the panels

Hmm. I wonder what I'll turn up if I google "solar myths".

Myth #5: Making solar panels takes more energy than it could ever produce.

A report by the National Renewable Energy Lab [nrel.gov] shows that solar photovoltaic panels actually payback the energy used to produce the panels in 1 to 4 years depending on the type of panel. Because solar panels last at least 30 years, PV systems will provide at minimum 26 to 29 years of pollution-free electricity for your home!

What rubbish. Even your typical silicon substrate based solar cell will regenerate the energy used to produce it after 5 years. This is when you include all energy involved in the process, from mining onwards.

The lifetime of Si wafer solar cells is at least 20 years. So they return at least 4 times the power used to produce them.

I looked at solar panels for my house two years ago, and I looked again recently. The efficiency of the available cells has increased by about 50% for the same cost. So saying nothing has changed is a bit misleading.

Really, the problem is that Solar cells used to be 10x too expensive to be worthwhile for most people. Now they're only 2-3x too expensive. In a few more years they could actually start to become commonplace.

With the subsidy factored in, they're actually a reasonably good investment now. The problem is that the current rate of development means that if I wait for a few years I'll get a much better system. This isn't a problem for something like a computer, because it's relatively cheap and I'll replace it in a few years anyway. Something like a solar power system I'd want to last for at least 10 years. If I can get one twice as good for the same price in two years, it's worth waiting...

Goody! I can have renewable energy, and all I have to do is make my fellow citizens pay for it!

The great thing about hating the government is never having to think. In many situations such as this one, where society needs to navigate a large infrastructure change, the early adopters provide a public good so that it becomes possible to achieve a Libertarian price point in the fat lump of the adoption curve sooner rather than later. You can argue that I'm wrong in this case, but it requires two orders of magnitude more mental input than your original comment.

My father installed a 1st generation heat-pump technology in the early 1980s. It was hardly painless. Mostly worked pretty good, but some components were failing every 18 months, until design problems were identified and resolved.

And that's nothing compared to what we pay bankers to fail on our behalf. If my father got a subsidy, it went right back out the door on expected unexpected maintenance costs. The bankers sent their subsidies straight to Switzerland.

In two years, the price of solar panels has dropped by 50%, meaning that quite a few of the stories we've seen in the past years have made it into production.If you don't want to read about the fundamental research that inevitably predates commercial improvements, go read a marketing magazine.

The $/watt number refers to the cost of the PV chips. So it costs them $0.40 to create a chip that outputs 1 watt.

At $0.40/w you're paying $400 for a 1Kw panel. At that cost it will take 4000 Kwh @ $0.10/Kwh to pay for itself. That's about 2 years if it gets ~8hrs of sun a day. Everything produced after that 4000Kwh is "free", and since panels last for 10, 15, even 20+ years, that's a lot of "free" power. If grid electricity costs more than $0.10/Kwh, then payback is even faster. (I'm assuming perfect efficiencies to keep the math simple, but you get the point)

That is a lot of free power IF you get those eight hours of sunlight, and IF you get them when you want them and IF you can use the power at the output voltage of the panel. Sadly not one of those is correct for home installation:o(

You actually get an average 4 hours peak output for a fixed panel, the power arrives while you are at work, and you don't have too many devices that run off of 24v DC.

It is the batteries, inverters, trackers and installation that make PV expensive.

That's why the energy company pays you for feeding back the unused energy you generate into the grid. Ultimately it boils down to a tonne of coal they didn't have to burn, a kg of nuclear fuel they didn't have to refine, manufacture and turn into waste or a cubic metre of gas they didn't have to ignite.

Uh, what? Customers don't pay for power, they pay for energy. $0.40/watt, assuming 8 hours of useable sunlight per day, means about 3kWh/year. Customers pay $0.10/kWh in places where electricity is cheap. After one year, customers would pay at least $0.30, so the payback period is one and a third years, make it two years to cover installation / transmission costs and so on. In some places in the USA, electricity costs $0.40/kWh, so this would pay for itself in 4 months.

You will only get 8 hours of usable sunlight per year if you have a solar tracker and live in a particularly sunny spot. Here in Sydney, (which is on the same latitude sun wise as LA for you North Americans) PV installers base calculations on on 4 hours at the rated value for fixed PV.

So a 200w panel costing $600 would give you 300 KW per year. At our electricity prices that is $68 a year, so paid off in 9 years and a ROI of 280% over the 25 years of installation. Sounds okay. Sounds even better when you take into account that buying grid energy from renewables in Australia commands a 40% premium on the price, and that there is a connection fee of $160 per year, and that energy prices will continue to rise.

The problem is that the cost of the panel is only about a third of the cost of the installation for home solar, even if you do it yourself. To make matters worse the batteries have a much shorter life than the panels.

whatever, I'm sure this was all true a year or 2 ago before module ASPS plummeted. however, these guys are now working against a commodity and china has demonstrated they are cool with 7% GM on modules. Polysilicon prices fell off a cliff and economies of scale have worked. wafer costs are 57c for the Chinese leaders now and their targets are under 50c by 2013, which means the competitive advantage of this process is zilch. This idea had legs in 2007-2008. No longer. Heck, even CdTe thin film lost its production cost advantage compared to China. Regular multi / quasi-mono cells will deliver terawatts of power. This other shit is a side show.

I assume the listed price of 40 pennies per watt is a watt per hour at peak performance? So to compare against a currently offered grid tie in system at 300 watt hours this seems to be about 1/10th the price. Granted, that's comparing a full system with alternators and a tie in system to feed unused power back into the grid, but given how PG&E prices per KW/hr in a tiered system (more power you use, more it costs per watt) this seems like a good deal.

So a new excuse to put off installing solar panels for a while longer! Yay!

No. The $/watt number refers to the cost of the PV chips. So it costs them $0.40 to create a chip that outputs 1 watt.

At $0.40/w you're paying $400 for a 1Kw panel. At that cost it will take 4000 Kwh @ $0.10/Kwh to pay for itself. That's about 2 years if it gets ~8hrs of sun a day. Everything produced after that 4000Kwh is "free". If grid electricity costs more than $0.10/Kwh, then payback is even faster. (I'm assuming perfect efficiencies to keep the math simple, but you get the point)

There's no 'per hour' in this figure. At peak power, an area that will produce 1W costs 40 cents.Install this area, then yes it will produce up to 1 Wh in 1 hour.To compare to a grid-tied system you'll need to split its price into panels and electronics. As a shortcut, you can usually find the price per Watt of the panels since that's the easiest way to compare different panels. It bypasses the need to calculate the panel's efficiency vs. cost and gives a single metric to gauge the panel's economic feasibil

Watt per hour and watt-hour is not the same thing. watt-hour is energy. watt per hour is... change in power? You buy capacity, or power. I.e., a 500MW coal plant. if it runs for an hour, it produces 500MW-hours of energy. 40 pennies per watt means it will produce 1 watt of electricity under peak conditions for every $0.40 you invest into capacity. How much energy you'll actually put out over a day is another question altogether.

a couple reports last year said something about $5/Watt installed would be the

I just looked at the company's website. There, they do call them protons: "In PIE, high-energy protons (or hydrogen ions) are embedded into 'donor' wafers", where PIE means "Proton Induced Exfoliation".

This company isn't a solar panel manufacturer, per se, but rather a company that wants to manufacture semiconductor wafers that are thinner than you can get right now, with less waste. So, they are like those enterprising fellows that sold the shovels and pickaxes to gold prospectors back in the day. They didn't care who struck it rich so long as they could sell the equipment and supplies to all comers. They aren't Xerox or a publishing company; these guys want to sell reams of paper.

This is great stuff – an innovation that can benefit the whole industry. There are other companies that are working along similar lines, though with different technology. 1366 Technologies [1366tech.com] is one that comes to mind.

not even that - they aren't going to make wafers - they are building and selling the equipment to make the wafers.. so this is like the company that sold the laths to make handles to the company that made the pickaxes to sell to gold prospectors.

normally i'd look at something like this and say "someone will buy and bury it" except it has more than one industry.. while it has the potential to drop solar panel costs.. it also has the potential to drop semiconductor fab costs.. so if someone wants to buy an

There's lots of technology that has gotten better price per watt... but they all sucked at watts per area, so it wasn't worth installing them. (as you have similar installation cost for labor, with a longer payback period)

Meh, the world isn't lacking in area that could be covered with solar panels.

Lol, the young and ignorant.

Here's a slight fact that you seem to forget... all this land you are referring to,hosts some type of flora or fauna that the environmental groups will not allowyou to kill or modify the territory of.

And while I'm not at the height of tree hugging... stopping the use of fossil fuelsto remedy one issue by creating another one, isn't exactly the greatest of ideas.

Rooftops are the key, that is what this article is about. This company has deviseda cheaper method of production and at the same time, made a solar cell that isflexible. That means more rooftop installs. More on the side of water storage tankinstalls. Farmer Brown gets to make some money cause his corn silos have somesolar cells wrapped around them, and there's solar on his barn roof, etc.

The solution to fossil fuel independence, isn't killing indigenous plants and animalsto install large solar heaters. It is making each person grid independent. And toget them off of fossil fuels by providing an at-home electrical solution.

Here are a few points that the article do not mention;1. What is the cost of the hydrogen ion particle accelerator?2. Is the low cost only taking into account the cost of materials and power and not the amortized cost of the machine?3. What is the efficiency of the panels? The hint that it is less due to the reflective surface but how much less is an issue. Lower cost is great but if it uses 4 times the area it might not be viable. I love this quote "Sivaram says the company has implemented an alternative anti-reflection technology that allows its solar cells to perform as well as ones made with the conventional process." If the process is not yet implemented it is only a theory and may not work.4. How resistant are these wafers to the elements?

Yet another "release" that appears to be a technology article but really is a thinly veiled attempt at gathering investment capitol.

As far as I know, the reason silicon-based solar cells need to be thick is essentially because of the poor light absorption. Si is an indirect band semiconductor, which means that in order to have a splitting of electron and holes due to light, you need a thick layer of active material. Therefore, a thin solar cell would not provide enough photon to electron conversion. This is normally why direct band semiconductor solar cells (GaAs, CIGS) are usually thinner (about 1 micron) than Si.
Bottom line: it's OK to make Si thinner, but what is the performance hit due to reduced sun collection?

Twin Creeks doesn't make solar cells. They make machines used for making the major component of the cells. They have production ready machines for sales right now. According to the Wall Street Journal article they are quite happy to sell the machines to Red China and the WSJ thinks that's who's going to buy most of them given they have the capital and they don't have irrational politicians that think "green" is a bad word. We could be making the cells here in the US. But that's not going to happen because it's more politically expedient to sell out the countries future for short term gains. The end result is this technology will create a few hundred jobs in the US to make the specialized machines. Most of the end products will be purchased by European and Asian customers who have a long term energy policy.

I would point out that Solyndra was one of many green programs under the loan program. The vast majority of them did just fine. Surprisingly the best performing are the solar farms because the loans were backing projects that had 20-year energy purchase agreements.

the ONLY cells that have any longevity are the grown crystal types. The garbage that you see at the low price end lose 20% of their power generating capacity each year.

the 45 watt harbor freight kit will be generating 2 watts in 4 years, even in a northern climate.

Call me when these new "cheap" solar cell techniques will last 40 years under airizona sun. I still have 4 old panels from the 80's that have turned dark brown and they generate 70% of their new rated capacity, and they were retired from a solar farm in 1993.

You don't have to solve every problem on day 1. Simply reducing the load on Coal power plants and letting more people charge their (electric) cars off of solar would already make a huge dent in the fossil fuel consumption across the globe. Maybe in 5-10 years such a setup will be practical, depending on advances in battery and solar technologies. It's hard to predict. Airplanes will still use fossil fuels (or maybe biofuels if that pans out), but that's alright because the pressure on them will be lessened from several other sectors of the economy.